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Monday, July 23, 2012

We visited Sweetie Pie's on a Saturday at about 2 p.m. The line was out the door but moving. We watched people coming by the carloads. There were many out of state license plates. We talked to one woman in line who had drove 4 hours from Kansas City to dine at Sweetie Pie's. There were also many Cardinals Baseball fans who dropped before the game to get a bit to eat at Sweetie Pie's which is now a major tourist attraction.

1. Be patient. This is an outing for the day.

2. Wear comfortable shoes.

3. Look your best. When you enter the doors of the restaurant you agree to be filmed on their popular reality TV series Sweetie Pie's.

4. Be prepared to wait. Did I say that already? We waited to get in the door to discover more lines inside the restaurant.

5. Flash cameras are not allowed. Have a camera ready you may be able to get a photo with one of Sweetie Pie's Reality TV Stars.

6. Take some extra moolah with you to purchase a Souvenir Sweetie Pie's T-shirt.

10. Sweetie Pie's Menu Prices are not listed on their website. We chose 1 Chicken Dinner with two sides and 1 Catfish Dinner with two sides plus Sweet Tea and Lemonade for our drink selection and 2 Peach Cobblers for dessert. Our meal tab totaled $35 for two people for lunch on a Saturday afternoon.

Oprah's visit to Sweetie Pie's has put St. Louis Grove Area on the Map. Sweetie Pie's is a Reality Show on Oprah's OWN TV Channel.

"When Robbie Montgomery – one of the original back-up singers for 1960's soul duo sensation Ike and Tina Turner – toured with the band, she poured her creative gifts into her cooking as much as her singing. After the singing stopped, Robbie took her mother's soul food recipes, passed down through generations, and created the empire known as "Sweetie Pie's," St. Louis' iconic and wildly popular soul food restaurant run by Robbie and her dynamic family. Welcome to Sweetie Pie's follows the loud, loving and still very musical Montgomery family as they struggle with the demands of expanding their family-owned business, one soulful dish at a time."Sweetie Pie's At the Mangrovewww.sweetiepieskitchen.com4270 Manchester AvenueSt. Louis(314) 371-0304Have you dined at Sweetie Pie's?Related Articles:

"A restaurant called Verpilate's was built at 30 Pier Avenue in 1934, and it was converted into the Lighthouse, a bar, in 1940. ("Café" was added to the name only several decades later.) The club first began showcasing jazz music on May 29, 1949, when owner John Levine permitted bassist Howard Rumsey to start a recurring Sunday jam session on a trial basis. The experiment was a success. Rumsey became club manager soon after, and put together a house band called the Lighthouse All-Stars.
While the club also hosted visiting groups, the Lighthouse All-Stars became a noted ensemble in its own right, which had among its guest musicians Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan and Miles Davis. The longest-running members of the Lighthouse All-Stars were Bob Cooper (tenor saxophone), Conte Candoli (trumpet), and Stan Levey (drums).
West Coast jazz stalwarts Shorty Rogers, Richie Kamuca, Bud Shank, Shelly Manne, and Jimmy Giuffre were also regulars in the early days. Max Roach was the regular drummer for a while in 1953.[1] The club also became an important venue for recordings; Art Pepper, Lee Morgan, Cannonball Adderley, Don Ellis, Mose Allison, Ramsey Lewis, the Modern Jazz Quartet, The Three Sounds, the Jazz Crusaders,[2] and Joe Henderson all made recordings there.
The Lighthouse sponsored an inter-collegiate jazz festival late in the 1950s, and the competition's winners included Mike Melvoin and Les McCann.
John Levine died in 1970, and his family sold the club to Rudy Onderwyzer, manager and part owner of Shelly Manne's club, Shelly's Manne-Hole. Rumsey left the Lighthouse in the 1970s, and Onderwyzer sold it again in 1981. The new owners remodeled the club and mostly discontinued the jazz-music policy. From the middle of the 1990s, jazz began to come back to the club, first on Sundays, then two days a week."